seemed to acknowledge something understood. Life went on with a
continuous lean toward something rarely mentioned, plainly
uppermost; it embodied a tacit reference of everything to some code
so thoroughly recognized that occasion for alluding to it was
unfrequent. Its inhabitants appeared to know things which her people
did not even suspect. The air of the brothers especially was that of
men at their ease yet ready to rise--of men whose loins were girded,
alert for an expected call.

Under their influence a new idea of life, and the world, and the
relations of men and things, began to grow in the mind of Mercy.
There was a dignity, almost grandeur, about the simple life of the
cottage, and the relation of its inmates to all they came near. No
one of them seemed to live for self, but each to be thinking and
caring for the others and for the clan. She awoke to see that
manners are of the soul; that such as she had hitherto heard admired
were not to be compared with the simple, almost peasant-like dignity
and courtesy of the chief; that the natural grace, accustomed ease,
and cultivated refinement of Ian's carriage, came out in attention
and service to the lowly even more than in converse with his equals;
while his words, his gestures, his looks, every expression born of
contact, witnessed a directness and delicacy of recognition she
could never have imagined. The moment he began to speak to another,
he seemed to pass out of himself, and sit in the ears of the other
to watch his own words, lest his thoughts should take such sound or
shape as might render them unwelcome or weak. If they were not to be
pleasant words, they should yet be no more unpleasant than was
needful; they should not hurt save in the nature of that which they
bore; the truth should receive no injury by admixture of his
personality. He heard with his own soul, and was careful over the